Free Katy Carter Wants a Hero by Ruth Saberton

door. Apart from this, the room is pretty much bare. Surely a red setter can’t do too much damage in here?
    Ollie takes his coat off and puts it under the desk. ‘Sasha! Lie down!’
    Sasha obediently folds herself up like David Blaine in his glass box and pants hopefully up at us. I heave a sigh of relief.
    ‘Good girl.’ Ollie strokes her silky head and then gently shuts the door. For a few moments we stand in the hallway like nervous parents waiting to hear their baby cry. Then the doorbell sounds again and I practically shoot into orbit.
    ‘Chill out!’ Ollie’s long legs stride to the door. ‘That’ll be my dinner date.’
    I lean weakly against the wall. The strain of giving this dinner party must have added years to me, and we haven’t even started eating yet. There’s no way I can do this for the next forty years. I’d rather disembowel myself.
    ‘Come in,’ I hear Ollie cry. ‘Thank God you could make it.’
    In spite of myself, I crane my neck in order to see who has had the misfortune to fall for Ollie this time. Not that I care, obviously! But because I’m madly curious to see who could put up with Ollie’s smelly socks, terrible taste in music and dribbly dog. Normally it’s a willowy surf chick type with big boobs and a vacant gaze. I’d bet my month’s salary that tonight is no different.
    It’s just as well I’m not a betting woman.
    The creature that explodes into my narrow flat is certainly no surf chick. In fact it’s no chick at all. It’s a man.
    Or at least I think it is.
    ‘Darling,’ trills a vision in flowing purple. ‘I simply
adore
the trousers! Velvet flares! So retro! So Seventies!’
    I goggle at him. I’m afraid I simply can’t help it. I’ve never seen a man wearing lilac eye shadow and pink lipstick. Well, not since about 1985 anyway. And I’ve certainly never seen one wearing what looks like a purple cloak. Think Doctor and the Medics meets Michael Praed in his
Robin of Sherwood
days and you kind of get a picture of the vision standing before me looking more like a wacky entrant to the Big Brother house than a guest at a dinner party for stuffy merchant bankers.
    It’s Frankie. Ollie’s cousin, lead singer of the Screaming Queens, camper than a Cath Kidston tent and on a mission to shock.
    Shit.
    ‘Hello, darling,’ says my guest cheerfully. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’ Reaching beneath his cloak, he pulls out a giant cactus in a blue china pot. I eye it nervously. It looks lethal. New York street gangs’ knives are blunter than the spikes on this two-foot monstrosity.
    Frankie shoves the cactus into my arms, nearly turning me into a kebab. ‘We got this especially for you.’
    ‘It’s a fiancé replacement for all the times yours is off playing golf,’ explains Ollie, carefully turning the plant pot around to reveal my beloved’s name daubed in fluorescent green paint. ‘I think it’s a vast improvement on the other giant prick called James.’
    ‘Very funny,’ I hiss. ‘Bring a bottle of wine next time.’
    ‘I adore giant pricks,’ wheezes Frankie, whose mascara is starting to run. ‘Can’t wait to meet the real James.’
    ‘Now’s your chance,’ grins Ollie, and sure enough James is emerging from the sitting room looking to refill glasses. Before he spots James the Cactus and all hell breaks loose, I reverse swiftly into our bedroom and kick the door shut.
    I am going to bloody kill Ollie. I might have known he’d pull a stunt like this. Talk about shaking up the evening.
    As I hide the cactus beneath the pile of coats on the bed, I think murderous thoughts about what I’ll do to Ollie when I can get my hands on him.
    En route back to the sitting room I take a detour via the kitchen and help myself to another glass of wine. Something tells me that nothing except getting plastered will get me through this evening.
    ‘So,’ Frankie is saying, gesticulating wildly with purple-tipped fingers and looking in the midst of my soberly